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If he could not seize Miss McClean, he would be likely to use every means within his power to bring about her death and prevent another from making off with his prize. Jaimihr, then, was the most pressing danger. Second, as a Hindoo, she knew well how fiendishly the priests loathed the Christian missionaries; and it was common knowledge that the Maharajah was cross-hobbled by the priests.
They both answered him at once, both looking in his eyes across the unsteady rays of the flickering, smoky lamp. "The amount has been, of course, much exaggerated," said McClean, "but I have no doubt there is enough there to pay the taxes of all India for a year or two." "Then I have another question to ask. Do you both or do you not place yourselves at the service of the Company?
"I'll show them!" muttered Rosemary McClean, wiping the blown dust from her eyes and facing the wind again that now began to carry with it the unspread taint the awful, sickening, soul-revolting smell inseparable from Hindoo funeral rites.
His eyes were all for Rosemary McClean, but his gestures included all of them, and they all answered him with nods or grunts as each saw fit. "Send for the Sikh!" commanded Cunningham. Five minutes later, with a lump of native bread still in his fist, Jaidev Singh walked up and saluted. "Where is Byng-bahadur now?" asked Cunningham. "At Deeseera, sahib not shut in altogether, but hard pressed.
A little later Miss McClean led Jaimihr through a passage in the rock, off which axe-hewn cells led on either side, to the far side of the summit, where the parapet was higher but the wall was very much less sheer.
He was about to cross-examine Miss McClean rigorously, even at the risk of seeming either rude or else frightened; but before his lips could frame another question he caught sight of Mahommed Gunga making signals to him. He affected to ignore the signals. He objected to being kept in the dark so utterly, and wished to find out a little for himself before listening to what the Rangars had to say.
Both watchers turned and gazed straight into the lamplight that streamed out past the tall form of Duncan McClean. He stared at them and they stared back again. Joanna slunk into the deep shadow at one side of the steps. "Is it necessary for you to annoy me by rapping on my door as well as by spying on me?" asked the missionary in a tone of weary remonstrance.
The Scotsman was beginning to betray an inclination to bridle under the youngster's attitude, and to show an equally pronounced desire not to appear to. "More so, probably, than anybody else!" "Are you positive both of you you too, Mr. McClean that all that talk about treasure in Howrah City is not mere imagination and legend?" "Absolutely positive!"
It was another member of the sweeper caste, lurking in the darkness of an inner courtyard, who pointed out the bronze-barred door to her through which the treasure guardians had chanted on their way; it was he, too, who told her that Rosemary McClean and her father had been rushed into the palace through the main entrance.
THAT was no time or place for any girl of twenty to be wandering unprotected. Rosemary McClean knew it; the old woman, of the sweeper caste, that is no caste at all, the hag with the flat breasts and wrinkled skin, who followed her dogwise, and was no more protection than a toothless dog, knew it well, and growled about it in incessant undertones that met with neither comment nor response.
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